Melissa Corbin cooks blackberry cobbler at her home in East Nashville. / Dipti Vaidya / The Tennessean

Written by

Jennifer Justus

The Tennessean

Melissa Corbin used a cooking pot called a tagine to cook Moroccan Beef and Sweet Potato Stew in her East Nashville home. / Photos by Dipti Vaidya / The Tennessean

ABOUT THE SERIES

Cooking is nothing to be afraid of! It’s easier and cheaper than you would imagine, and it’s more healthy than eating out or buying prepared foods. In our Nashville Cooks series, each month we visit the home of one family who will teach us how to prepare a traditional family meal that’s healthful, inexpensive, easy and made from scratch. At each session, we put a meal on the table but we also reconnect with the fun of cooking.

Melissa’s kitchen tips

1.“A cast-iron skillet is a must in anybody’s kitchen,” she said. “And a jar of meat fat.” 2.“You need a good spice cabinet and a good batch of herbs.” Corbin grows her own herbs in her backyard. 3.“I love my little immersion blender,” she said. She uses it to smooth out sauces, make smoothies and blend soups on camping trips. 4.Corbin doesn’t have a bread machine, but she does use her Kitchen Aid mixer for kneading as well as making ice cream and sausage. 5.“You need a good sharp chef’s knife, and keep it sharp. Do not wash it in the dishwasher. And a good cutting board. Not plastic, not glass. Viking makes a good composite board, which helps maintain the knife.” 6.“I’ve been making posole an awful lot right now,” she said of cooking the Mexican soup at home, as well as homemade tortillas. “Anything Mexican or Italian. Stuart (her husband) is from Houston.” And when his mother visits, she brings thermoses of his favorite salsas and quesos from Houston restaurants. “I freeze them off in little mason jars,” Corbin said of the salsa. “In fact, we put it on our eggs this morning.”

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Nashville Cooks, Part 28: Melissa Corbin, food consultant

Melissa Corbin’s small brick bungalow sits off busy Gallatin Road in East Nashville, but inside, it has a feel that’s more farmhouse.

Wearing an embroidered apron made from a pillowcase, Corbin stood between the red walls and cool tile of her kitchen and mixed ingredients for a cobbler, the back kitchen door flung open to a sunny screened-in porch.

A loaf of bread made with garlic and rosemary from her garden sat on a table nearby with bowls of homemade cranberry marmalade and pickled fennel with rounds of Kenny’s Farmhouse Gouda, pimento goat cheese from Noble Springs Dairy and Nature’s Harmony Fortsonia Farmstead Cheese from the Bloomy Rind. Blackberries for the cobbler, gathered on her parents’ property and “put up” for winter, warmed on the stove.

“It’s part of who I am and part of what I’m thankful for,” Corbin said of the family’s berry-picking tradition. “Mom and Daddy taught me all that.”

Corbin, indeed, took naps in the cab of her father’s tractor growing up and helped put together farmhand meals, wielding a butcher knife from the age of 5, next to her mother in the kitchen.

The cobbler recipe she put together for our Nashville Cooks series came from a tattered book collected by friends of her mother. The main course, a beef stew, was inspired by the first meal Corbin remembers cooking. She submitted her beef stew recipe for a classroom cookbook when she was in second grade, but she remembers coming home upset that the other kids wrote up boxed mac and cheese — not real recipes, she said — instead.

“This is just kind of a way to freshen up an old recipe,” she said of her Moroccan-spiced version cooked in a pot called a tagine. “The tagine is probably the oldest form of a Crock-Pot there is.”

After tossing the beef in fragrant spices — cinnamon, ginger and paprika — and refrigerating overnight, Corbin sauteed onion and garlic and then added the beef, tomatoes, stock and sweet potatoes to cook slow and low. She used a European-style tagine with a cast-iron bottom, but she said a Dutch oven works just as well.

As for ingredients, she also likes to go with what’s on hand. Sweet potatoes from Delvin Farms are in season, and when she couldn’t find shallots, she just subbed a red onion instead.

Career change

Corbin came to Nashville to attend Belmont University, where she majored in vocal performance and social work. But after a career as an adoption counselor and several roles in marketing and advertising, she found her love of food and farm life calling her back.

Corbin recently started her own business, Corbin in the Dell (www.corbininthedell.com), to help restaurants connect with local farmers and artisans.

“It’s important to me, and I’m sure it’s important to many, that you know where your food comes from,” she said.

About 20 minutes before lunch, Corbin tossed a handful of organic peas into her stew. Then she ladled portions of it over couscous — even a small bit for her dog Emma, an aging and friendly black mixed-breed with rings of white fur around her eyes.

Sitting down to eat, Corbin said she likes to offer this piece of advice to friends who say they can’t cook.

“Well, you can read, can’t you? It’s just like sewing, if you can read directions, you know,” she said.

But she also added that it’s best to start with a simple recipe and work your way up.

“What’s the worst that could happen? You start again, or you feed it to Emma,” she said. “It’s fun to play around.”

A handful or about 1/2 cup peas (Melissa uses fresh when possible or frozen organic peas)

1. Cut the meat into bite-size pieces. Toss it in the spices (paprika through pepper), cover and refrigerator overnight (if possible) or for at least an hour. Before cooking, remove the meat from the refrigerator and allow it to come to room temperature.

2. Meanwhile, heat oil in the bottom of a tagine or Dutch oven. Add onion and saute until onions begin to turn translucent. Add garlic and beef, and saute until beef begins to brown. Add stock to deglaze pan, then add tomatoes and sweet potatoes. Bring mixture up to medium temperature and stir to blend.

3. Turn temperature to low, cover and leave pot of stew to cook for about an hour. About 20 minutes before the end of cook time, add peas.

4. Serve over couscous, rice, quinoa or barley, and garnish with cilantro, parsley or green onion. (Melissa prefers cilantro with this dish. “I just think the cilantro goes well with those exotic spices.”)

1. Melt butter in large cobbler pan (Melissa uses an enameled cast-iron dish) in the oven. Heat blackberries in a saucepan on the stove with 1 cup sugar. Bring to boil. When sugar has melted, turn off heat. In a separate bowl, make a batter with flour, 1 cup sugar, baking powder, salt and milk. Pour batter over melted butter. Pour warm fruit over batter. Bake 20 to 30 minutes in 350-degree oven.

Recipe by Florence Barham from “Yesterday and Today Cookbook” compiled by the Country Woman’s Club.